I WOKE IN the afternoon, groggy and dry mouthed. I sat at the table, called a number, then another, then waited on hold, listening to a voiceover advertise the hospital’s services. State of the art; Groundbreaking research; Largest Cancer Center in the World.

“This is ICU,” a woman’s voice finally answered.

“I’d like to check on a patient,” I said, and told the voice my mother’s name. “I’m her daughter,” I added.

The voice put me on hold again. Excellence in patient outreach. Innovative clinical trials. “Still sleeping,” she said when she returned, and I remembered my mother was drugged, too. She would be moved to a new floor in the afternoon. The voice gave me the room number. I wrote it down then went to the fridge and removed a Diet Coke from one of two long cardboard boxes. My mother bought Diet Coke by the case and drank several in a day, the way she ate low-fat ice cream sandwiches, her appetite excessive with the indulgences she deemed allowable, safe. I cracked the cap on my can, drank and felt the fizzy syrup hit my stomach, unhappy when it landed. Diet soda never sat well with me. But I often drank it anyway. I went to my bag, took out my pain pills, swallowed one and got in the shower. My mom had bought a new shampoo since I left, a brand I’d seen hocked on home shopping channels. I pumped out a handful, took too much. “You are not the only person in this house,” she would say when I used up bath stuff, food stuff, Diet Coke, toilet paper, and didn’t replace it. “Selfish behavior,” she would say, then something about when she was my age. She was twelve when her mother died, and her father was a piece of work. She didn’t have the luxury of adolescence, a childhood before pain. Maybe her pain meant my childhood was also tainted, though anytime I had the thought it felt like an excuse. Plenty of kids grow up without a dad. Plenty of kids have a sick parent they have to take care of.

Wet-headed, I slathered myself in my mother’s body butter, dabbed her Euphoria on my pulse points. My nipples were taped with Steri-Strips I was supposed to let fall off on their own. One at a time, I peeled them away. Translucent stitches held me together. But they were the melting kind, and almost entirely absorbed. I took a burst of topless selfies, found the best one and filtered out the last bruised patches. I sent the image to Jake with a UU and a kiss emoji.